According to Shuttle, the X27 will be released at the IFA 2008 show in Berlin, Germany, which starts Aug. 29. However, details of the device have already leaked on an online forum maintained by the company.

Touting the X27 as “almost fanless,” Shuttle says it makes just 23 decibels of noise and uses 36 Watts, idling at 23 Watts. While no information was provided on the fan's location, Intel's own D945GCLF mini-ITX motherboard does without a fan on the Atom 230, but requires a small fan on the 82945GC.

The X27, too, is based on a mini-ITX motherboard, and, just like the D945GCLF, includes a PCI expansion slot, but not the 1 x PCI Express slot called for by Via's mini-ITX 2.0 spec. Whatever motherboard Shuttle is using, it apparently isn't the D945GCLF (“Little Falls”) itself, since gigabit Ethernet is cited here but not offered by Intel.

Shuttle says additional features on the X27 include four rear-panel USB ports, PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, mic in, and line in/out. An additional listed “d-sub” connector could be either a serial or VGA port, but the company didn't specify which.

The X27, apparently shipped initially in a “barebone” configuration, has bays for a 2.5-inch hard disk drive and an optical disk drive. With an IDE connector and two SATA ports, the nettop has a single SO-DIMM slot that accepts up to 2GB of memory, says Shuttle.